“It tastes terrible. It's no good.”
He bit off a chunk above the handle to taste it.
“You're right,” he said, “it's no good. I'm going to toss it back to him.”
He flung the pistol down at the feet of the gimpy man.
I flung the partially eaten barrel at the same spot.
The gimpy man picked up the two pieces of his pistol, gaped at them, and started to howl. He tossed the things away and hobbled off as fast he could go. From where we sat on the scrap heap we laughed our heads off over the funny way he ran.
Late that night a narrow beam of light pierced the darkness off to the southwest, accompanied by a loud chugging noise. Another train was coming.
We watched as it steamed up to the end of the tracks, where it plowed into another train already there. The cars of the train accordioned into one another, noisily dumping the iron they were hauling to the side of the tracks.
There would be no more trains after that. I asked if there were any parts of the train that were tasty. He said the wheels were the best. So we started eating one of them, but stopped when we were halfway through it.
We also went down to the smelting ovens to find some newly smelted iron, but none of it tasted as good as the rusty iron we were used to.
We slept on the scrap iron heap during the day, then made life difficult for the smelters at night, sending them scurrying off in fear.
One night, we went out to frighten the men who were smashing woks. Spotting a rusty red wok in the flames of one of the ovens, we ran over. But we no sooner got our hands on it than we heard a loud
We attacked the net with our teeth, but no matter how hard we tried, we couldn't bite through the rope.
“We caught them,” they cried out ecstatically, “we caught them!”
Soon afterward, they scraped our rusty bodies with sandpaper. It hurt, it hurt like hell!
The Cure
THAT AFTERNOON, THE ARMED WORK DETACHMENT POSTED A notice on the whitewashed wall of Ma Kuisan's home, which faced the street; it announced the following morning's executions at the usual place: the southern bridgehead of the Jiao River. All able-bodied villagers were to turn out for educational purposes. There were so many executions that year that people had lost interest in them, and the only way to draw a crowd was to make attendance mandatory.
The room was still pitch-black when Father got up to light the bean-oil lamp. After putting on his lined jacket, he woke me up and tried to get me out of bed, but it was so cold all I wanted to do was stay under the warm covers – which Father finally pulled back. “Get up,” he said. “The armed work detachment likes to get their business over with early. If we're late, we'll miss our chance.”
I followed Father out the gate. The eastern sky was growing light. The streets were icy cold and deserted; winds from the northwest had swept the dust clean during the night; and the gray roadway was clearly visible. My fingers and toes were so cold it felt as if they were being chewed by a cat. As we passed the Ma family compound, where the armed work detachment was quartered, we noticed a light in the window and heard the sound of a bellows. Father said softly, “Step it up. The work detachment is getting breakfast.”
Father dragged me up to the top of the riverbank; from there, we could see the dark outline of the stone bridge and patches of ice in the hollows of the riverbed. I asked, “Where are we going to hide, Father?”
“Under the bridge.”
It was deserted under the bridge and pitch-black, not to mention freezing cold. My scalp tingled, so I asked Father, “How come my scalp is tingling?”
“Mine, too,” he said. “They've shot so many people here that the ghosts of the wronged are everywhere.”
I detected the movement of furry creatures in the darkness under the bridge. “There they are!” I shouted.
“Those aren't wronged ghosts,” Father said. “They're dogs that feed on the dead.”
I shrank back until I bumped into the bone-chilling cold of a bridge piling. All I could think about was Grandma, whose eyes were so clouded over with cataracts she was all but blind. The sky would be completely light once the cold glare from the three western stars slanted into the space under the bridge. Father lit his pipe; the fragrant smell of tobacco quickly enveloped us. My lips were turning numb. “Father, can I go out and run around? I'm freezing.”
Father's reply was, “Grate your teeth. The armed work detachment shoots their prisoners when the morning sun is still red.”
“Who are they shooting this morning, Father?”
“I don't know,” Father said. “But we'll find out soon enough. I hope they shoot some young ones.”
“Why?”
“Young people have young bodies. Better results.”
There was more I wanted to ask, but Father was already losing his patience. “No more questions. Everything we say down here can be heard up there.”
While we were talking, the sky turned fish-belly white. The village dogs had formed a pack and were barking loudly, but they couldn't drown out the wailing sounds of women. Father emerged from our hiding spot and stood for a moment in the riverbed, cocking his ear in the direction of the village. Now I was really getting nervous. The scavenger dogs prowling the space under the bridge were glaring at me as if they wanted to tear me limb from limb. I don't know what kept me from getting out of there as fast as I could. Father returned at a crouch. I saw his lips quiver in the dim light of dawn but couldn't tell if he was cold or scared. “Did you hear anything?” I asked.
“Keep quiet,” Father whispered. “They'll be here soon. I could hear them tying up the condemned.”
I moved up close to Father and sat down on a clump of weeds. By listening carefully, I could hear a gong in the village, mixed in with a man's raspy voice: “Villagers – go to the southern bridgehead to watch the execution – shoot the tyrannical landlord Ma Kuisan – his wife – puppet village head Luan Fengshan – orders of armed work detachment Chief Zhang – those who don't go will be punished as collaborators.”
I heard Father grumble softly, “Why are they doing this to Ma Kuisan? Why shoot him? He's the last person they should shoot.”
I wanted to ask Father why they shouldn't shoot Ma Kuisan, but before I could open my mouth, I heard the crack of a rifle, and a bullet went whizzing far off, way up into the sky somewhere. Then came the sound of horse hoofs heading our way, all the way up to the bridgehead; when they hit the flooring, they clattered like a passing whirlwind. Father and I shrank back and looked at the slivers of sunlight filtering down through cracks between the stones; we were both frightened and not quite sure just what was happening. After about half the time it takes to smoke a pipeful, we heard people coming toward us, shouting and clamoring. They stopped. I heard a man whose voice sounded like a duck's quack: “Let him go, damn it. We'll never catch him.”
Whoever it was fired a couple of shots in the direction of the hoofbeats. The sound echoed off the walls where we were hiding; my ears rang, and there was a strong smell of gunpowder.
Again the quack: “What the fuck are you shooting at? By now, he's in the next county.”
“I never thought he'd do anything like that,” someone else said. “Chief Zhang, he must be a farmhand.”
“He's a paid running dog of the landlord class, if you ask me,” the duck quacked.
Someone walked to the railing and started pissing over the side of the bridge. The smell was rank and overpowering.
“Come on, let's head back,” the duck quacked. “We've got an execution to attend to.”
Father whispered to me that the man who sounded like a duck was the chief of the armed work detachment, given the added responsibility by the district government of rooting out traitors to the Party; he was referred to as Chief Zhang.
The sky was starting to turn pink on the eastern horizon, where thin, low-hanging clouds slowly came into view; before long, they, too, were pink. Now it was light enough to make out some frozen dog turds on the ground of our hiding place, that and some shredded clothing, clumps of hair, and a chewed-up human skull. It was so
